Posted by med_empowered on January 4, 2007, at 19:15:55
In reply to Re: stimulants as antidepressents, posted by meAgain on January 4, 2007, at 16:55:44
I dont know, really. People always talk about stimulant abuse in the past, but it seems like most people did OK--there weren't huge rates of amphetamine psychosis or heart attacks from high doses of RX meth or anything. I read that in the early 60s, Beat kids and other young people starting getting heavy into rx speed--they'd forge prescriptions, find pill-mill docs to write scrips, that kind of thing. In california, there was even a problem with pharmacies selling IV amphetamines and barbiturates w/o a prescription--as a result, manufacturers stopped shipping those out to most pharmacies.
Anyway, it seems like the stimulants-for-depression thing never really went away...since stims are mostly in schedule II, though, docs do have to worry about the DEA, and these days the DEA is a force to be reckoned with. Also, I sometimes think that when docs prescribe something that makes the patient feel like crap, they feel like they're "real doctors," since I guess "treatment" sucks but "drugs" feel good. Plus, docs these days have really bought into alot of this anti-drug BS..some younger shrinks adamantly refuse to RX benzos, even though they have minor addictive potential and are cheaper and safer than a lot of alternatives.
poster:med_empowered
thread:719359
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20070101/msgs/719387.html